In the next few weeks, the young bald eagles in nests located in White Rock and South Surrey will start preparing to spread their wings and fly.
Featured on live, 24/7 streaming cameras set up by the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, viewers have been able to watch as the eaglets were first laid as eggs, then as they hatched, with the White Rock pair hatching on April 24, and 25 (their nest is located on a private portion of the White Rock bluff overlooking Boundary Bay), followed by the duo in the Surrey Reserve nest (South Surrey, on 0 Avenue by the border), which hatched on May 1 and 2.
“Eagles know to stay in their nest until they’re ready. An eagle – if its left to its own instincts – usually flies on the 83rd or 84th day,” said David Hancock, founder of the Hancock Wildlife Foundation.
“They’re incredibly consistent – it’s quite fascinating.”
When eaglets are getting ready to fledge – when they make their first flight, it’s called fledging – in the week to 10 days prior, they’ll start preparing for it with what is called branching, Hancock noted, when the eagle starts to take short hops or flights to branches in the nest tree, if there are branches nearby.
“If there are some branches above the nest, they’re jumping up through the branches and around the nest,” he said.
“They’re improving their ability and their neuro-muscular control, so when they plan to land on that branch they do – they don’t miss it. They are developing their tactile senses – how do they grab onto branches and stay there and hold on – it is so important to develop that before making that first flight – if you can’t land, you’ve got a real problem. It’s not just flying, it’s landing, too.”
For the White Rock nest, that likely means the eaglets will fledge around July 15 (83 days after the first eaglet hatched); the South Surrey eaglets should follow seven to eight days later.
Hancock, who has studied bald eagles and wild birds since he was a youngster, noted their feathers are hard-pinned by the 83rd or 84th day, which means the feathers no longer have blood and nutrients supplying them.
“That ensures on their first flight, that if they bang the base of their feathers on the landing, that they’re not breaking this big blood capsule that’s growing the feather,” Hancock explained.
“That 83rd or 84th day, nature has determined that ‘Hey kid, you’re ready to go,” he said. “The day that each bird leaves the nest, they are bigger than that bird is ever going to be in its life – it weighs more and its feathers are longer and wider than they’re ever going to be.”
Each time the eagle molts, the feathers get a bit shorter and narrower for the first three to four molts, because, as the bird matures and gets more experience in flying, it gets more neuro-muscular control on each feather and it becomes more efficient at flying, “so it doesn’t need the great huge sails it needed when it first left the nest,” he said.
“Usually they’re not fed for a day or two before they fledge… the parents know it, so they don’t bring any more food to the nest.
READ ALSO:One egg observed in South Surrey bald eagle nest
The eaglets are actually “on a high” for awhile after absorbing so much extra nutrition in the rest of their body because their feathers are all complete, and they then grow a lot of body fat with all that nutrition, which makes makes them bigger and heavier, Hancock said.
“By the time they make the first flight, they’re getting hungry because they haven’t eaten for two or three days… because they were so big and heavy, nature’s plan is (for them) to drop some weight so they can soar more easily and glide downhill to Alaska, because they’re going to get their first bloody meal usually in Alaska, not here.”
Although parents usually stop feeding their eaglets in the wilderness, a few birds will still get fed by their bald eagle parents in urban areas even when they’re getting ready to fledge, he said.
“This is a city phenomenon. Humans can’t get rid of their kids in cities and eagles have the same damn problem,” Hancock said, with a chuckle.
“Some of these city eagles can’t get rid of their kids either, so they end up trying to feed them, and that’s a problem, because then you start to feed them and then they just want to keep being fed.”
Normally, the usual method of an eagle is, it will fly around and practise flying for four to five days first.
“He doesn’t get fed, he just drops a bit of weight, and he’s getting better at flying and he’s got less baby fat to carry around, so its easier to fly and easier to soar on the updrafts.”
While there’s no salmon available in the Lower Mainland or valley yet, up north, “all those northern rivers are covered with dead salmon already.”
“It’s built into them: ‘Go north, young man or young lady, and you’ll find dinner,’” said Hancock.
All bald eagles – not just babies and juveniles – revert back to their vulture ancestry and scavenge for food six months out of the year, he noted.
“Even the adults do this – they do’t bother catching a damn thing all fall and winter, and live on dead salmon” and other scavenged dead animals starting from the end of June or July.
“That’s why we get some 35,000 to 50,000 bald eagles coming through the Fraser Valley every year. We are the biggest concentrating place for bald eagles in the world.”
To view the live streaming cameras of the bald eagle nests, visit hancockwildlife.org
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Bald eaglets in White Rock, South Surrey nests will prepare to fledge soon - Cloverdale Reporter - Cloverdale Reporter
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